Warning messages should be written using the Write-Warning cmdlet, which allows the warning messages to be suppressed with the -WarningAction parameter or the $WarningPreference automatic variable. A function needs to use CmdletBinding to implement this feature.
function WarningTest {
[CmdletBinding()]
param($n)
Write-Warning "This is a warning message for: $n."
"Parameter n = $n"
}
$a = WarningTest 'test one' -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
# To turn off warnings for multiple commads,
# use the WarningPreference variable
$WarningPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'
$b = WarningTest 'test two'
$c = WarningTest 'test three'
# Turn messages back on.
$WarningPreference = 'Continue'
$c = WarningTest 'test four'
To make it shorter at the command prompt, you can use -wa 0:
PS> WarningTest 'parameter alias test' -wa 0
Write-Error, Write-Verbose and Write-Debug offer similar functionality for their corresponding types of messages.
If it's errors you want to hide you can do it like this
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"; #This will hide errors
$someObject.SomeFunction();
$ErrorActionPreference = "Continue"; #Turning errors back on
Recently, I had to shut up powershell on a Linux host, this wasn't that obvious to figure out. After back and forth I found out that wrapping a command in $( ) and adding a explicit redirection after the wrapper works.
Anything else I tried, wouldn't - I still don't know why since the PowerShell Docs are of desirable quality (and full of inconsistency...)
To import all modules on startup, I added the following. This produced some stderr output by powershell that couldnt be put to rest by ErrorAction or redirection without using the wrapping...
If anyone could elaborate on why's that would be very appreciated.